a conservative service as the royal navy, and a storm of criticism arose both in parliament and in the press. Nothing daunted, Fisher determined that, before the conservative government, which was visibly tottering to its fall, went out of office, a general statement of the Admiralty’s naval policy in the many fields of its operation should be published. Lord Cawdor readily agreed, and after a wise revision by that able statesman’s hand, a statement of Admiralty policy, commonly called the Cawdor memorandum, was issued to parliament, with Cabinet approval, in November 1905, just before the fall of Mr. Balfour’s government. The reforms and economies introduced at Fisher’s instigation made it possible to reduce the navy estimates by £3,500,000 in 1904–1905 and by £1,500,000 in 1905–1906, while the fleet under his creative hand was becoming a more powerful weapon than it had been for generations. The Dreadnought was laid down in October 1905, launched in February 1906, and completed in December 1906, a triumph of rapid work and organization.
In the new and not very friendly atmosphere of the liberal government of 1906, Fisher thought it prudent to consent to a diminution of the programme of four capital ships a year which had been laid down in the Cawdor memorandum, and to postponing the construction of the proposed new great dockyard at Rosyth. At this time he had to meet the unabated hostility of the critics of his reforms and the insistent demands of a considerable ‘little England’ party in the House of Commons. He found in Lord Tweedmouth, his new chief, as loyal, if not so enthusiastic, a supporter of the principles he advocated as Lord Selborne and Lord Cawdor. The development on sound lines of the numerous schemes and reforms he had inaugurated required his unremitting attention. He never gained the sympathy of the new prime minister (Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman) in the same degree as he possessed that of Mr. Balfour and later of Mr. Asquith; but he was encouraged by the constant sympathy and close personal friendship of King Edward, to whom he was first and principal naval A.D.C. from 1904 to 1910. He felt that he was fighting not only for his official career but for the life of the new navy that he was building up. It was an anxious time, and feeling himself with his back to the wall, he began to show towards his opponents, particularly those who belonged to his own profession, a vindictiveness which tended to foster personal rancour and division among the personnel of the great sea service, hitherto singularly free from these evils. In 1907 Lord Charles Beresford [q.v.] was appointed commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet. That great and popular commander had been on cordial terms with Fisher, when his second in command in the Mediterranean, and had at first been an enthusiastic supporter of the common entry scheme of 1902; but from the date of his taking command of the Channel fleet he found himself continually at variance with the Admiralty on points both of detail and principle. Fisher was in no mood to welcome criticisms from the principal admiral afloat, and an unfortunate estrangement began which continued until Fisher’s retirement. In April 1908 Lord Tweedmouth was succeeded at the Admiralty by Mr. Reginald McKenna, who soon made up his mind that Fisher’s naval policy was in essentials right, and determined to give him the fullest support. Early in the following year, they both reluctantly became convinced that Germany, so far from responding to the slowing down of the shipbuilding programme decided on by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s government, was secretly accelerating her own to an extent which would soon place the naval supremacy of this country in jeopardy. The result, after a bitter contest in the Cabinet, was the famous programme of eight battleships of 1909–1910 and the hastening of the deferred construction of the Rosyth dockyard. Lord Charles Beresford’s continued differences with the Admiralty resulted in the termination of his command of the Channel fleet in January 1909. He subsequently addressed a communication to the prime minister criticizing the Admiralty policy in various directions. These criticisms were examined at great length by a committee of the Cabinet, whose conclusions, though expressing anxiety at the differences of opinion revealed, were generally favourable to Mr. McKenna’s and Lord Fisher’s policy. At the end of the year Fisher, on whom King Edward had conferred the order of merit in 1904 and the G.C.V.O. in 1908, was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Fisher, of Kilverstone, a Norfolk estate which had been bequeathed to his son Cecil by his old friend, Mr. Joseph Vavasseur.
In January 1910 Fisher resigned office and was succeeded as first sea lord by his old friend, Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson [q.v.], who had followed him as controller in 1897, and was in general sympathy with his naval policy. In 1912 Fisher became
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